A Little Whining

12Jun/113

A Little Whining

Hey, it worked for Ace over the Weiner thing.

First of all, nobody has taken me up on my offer to cross-post anything they've written about Joan Walsh. I know that Weinergate has sucked up all the oxygen in the room, but her mendacity on Weiner is classic Joan. Alex Pareene deserves far more abuse than I've been able to dole out, too.

Second, I'm a little astonished that more bloggers haven't taken the opportunity to subject Andrew Sullivan to the humiliation that he so richly deserves over the contents of the Palin emails.

Third, and most importantly, very few bloggers have taken up Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid's research into Leon Panetta's communist connections and communist sympathizing past. He could be confirmed as early as Tuesday. It is simply unacceptable that more people aren't demanding that he get asked important questions about these connections and policy statements in the past.

Weiner is finished, whether he resigns or not. For the reasons I've already outlined, I'd rather see him stay in office, but I won't be saddened if he leaves or--better yet--gets booted out on his ass. He's a political dead man walking. There are a lot of other, more important things to focus on now.

For instance, this:

The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered more than a dozen other cases in Tower Hamlets where both Muslims and non-Muslims have been threatened or beaten for behaviour deemed to breach fundamentalist “Islamic norms.”

One victim, Mohammed Monzur Rahman, said he was left partially blind and with a dislocated shoulder after being attacked by a mob in Cannon Street Road, Shadwell, for smoking during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last year.

“Two guys stopped me in the street and asked me why I was smoking,” he said. “I just carried on, and before I knew another dozen guys came and jumped me. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in hospital.”

“He reported it to the police and they just said they couldn’t track anyone down and there were no witnesses,” said Ansar Ahmed Ullah, a local anti-extremism campaigner who has advised Mr Rahman. “But there is CCTV in that street and it is lined with shops and people.”

Teachers in several local schools have told The Sunday Telegraph that they feel “under pressure” from local Muslim extremists, who have mounted campaigns through both parents and pupils – and, in one case, through another teacher - to enforce the compulsory wearing of the veil for Muslim girls. “It was totally orchestrated,” said one teacher. “The atmosphere became extremely unpleasant for a while, with constant verbal aggression from both the children and some parents against the head over this issue.”

Or this:

The Security Service had placed a listening device in a car driven by one of the men as part of an investigation into a suspected terrorist network in East London, sources told the Daily Telegraph.

When transcribers went back over a conversation the men had held in the car, they were picked up discussing killing Gary Smith and praising Allah as they drove from the scene after attacking him.

Akmol Hussein, 27, Sheikh Rashid, 27, Azad Hussain, 26, and Simon Alam, 19, all admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent after ambushing Mr Smith outside his school.

Akmol Hussein was heard setting out the plan to attack Mr Smith, head of religious education at Central Foundation Girls' School in Bow, east London, saying in a Bangladeshi dialect: 'This is the dog we want to hit, to strike, to kill.’

'He's mocking Islam and he’s putting doubts in people's minds...How can somebody take a job to teach Islam when they’re not even a Muslim themselves?' he added.

Or this:

“The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands. . . . The power of the legislative, being derived from the people . . . [is] only to make laws, and not to make legislators.”

— John Locke

“Second Treatise of Government”

Here, however, is a paradox of sovereignty: The sovereign people, possessing the right to be governed as they choose, might find the exercise of that right tiresome and so might choose to be governed in perpetuity by a despot they cannot subsequently remove. Congress did something like that in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.

The point of PPACA is cost containment. This supposedly depends on the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, which is a perfect expression of the progressive mind, is to be composed of 15 presidential appointees empowered to reduce Medicare spending — which is 13 percent of federal spending — to certain stipulated targets. IPAB is to do this by making “proposals” or “recommendations” to limit costs by limiting reimbursements to doctors. This, inevitably, will limit available treatments — and access to care when physicians leave the Medicare system.

The PPACA repeatedly refers to any IPAB proposal as a “legislative proposal” and speaks of “the legislation introduced” by the IPAB. Each proposal automatically becomes law unless Congress passes — with a three-fifths supermajority required in the Senate — a measure cutting medical spending as much as the IPAB proposal would.

This is a travesty of constitutional lawmaking: An executive branch agency makes laws unless Congress enacts legislation to achieve the executive agency’s aim.

I'm not trying to downplay the importance of the Weinergate coverage of Dana Loesch or Ace or Patterico or Stranahan or anyone else who was involved in getting the message out . . . such as CNN's Dana Bash. It could prove to be a sort of watershed moment in blogging, such as that which was provided by one-hit wonder Charles Johnson during Rathergate. Take a bow, people.

Now, let's refocus.